Orb-1 launch today out of Wallops

An Antares rocket with a Cygnus cargo freighter is scheduled to liftoff from Wallops Island in Virginia this afternoon with the launch window opening at 1:07 p.m. EST. The mission, designated as Orb-1, is the first commercial resupply mission to the International Space Station (ISS) for Orbital Sciences. Antares was slated to launch in December but was postponed after the pump module on one of the space station's external cooling loops shut down. The launch was pushed to Tuesday, but was scrubbed again due to high levels of space radiation. On September 18th, an Antares rocket launched a Cygnus spacecraft to the ISS on a COTS demonstration mission. Working in conjunction with Orbital Sciences, we created a dynamic, interactive 2D/3D simulation using our Cesium software that tracks Cygnus’ position as it approaches and rendezvous with the ISS. Click here to view it. Note: Cesium requires WebGL and is supported by recent versions of Chrome, Firefox and Opera. Internet Explorer is supported by using the Chrome Frame plugin. Safari is not currently supported. Read more at the Cesium FAQs. Good luck to the folks at NASA Wallops and to Orbital!